FilmBlather.com

"From now on, you control what happens to your family."

Slow motion has its limits as a stylistic device, but don't tell Florent Siri, whose Hollywood debut would be roughly a half-hour shorter were he banned from using it. This overkill tendency would be problematic but for the rest of the film, which is precisely the sort of grandiose, artfully overwrought genre thriller that can take thirty minutes of slow motion, and then ask for more. Full of elaborate camera set-ups, big dramatic gestures, and convoluted action sequences, Hostage is not a quiet film, and one could make a convincing argument that its fever pitch tone grows wearisome roughly by the time the movie reaches its fifth climax. But at least the movie has a tone, and a style, and enthusiasm; Siri may still need to polish his craft, but it is clear that he sees it as a craft.

The movie has a knack for character, too, and the screenplay by Doug Richardson overcomes the silly cop movie cliches that gave it life. Yes, the opening scene involves a failed hostage negotiation, as SWAT phenom Jeff Tally (Bruce Willis) tries to the bitter end to make sure that "no one dies today" and winds up with a career-ending disaster on his hands. Yes, he winds up demoted to being a small-town sheriff, reduced to pronouncing each day "Low Crime Monday," or Tuesday, or what have you, but he's not an arrogant martyr, and he harbors no desire to be a hero. The most extraordinary thing about him, in fact, is that throughout the ordeal that Hostage puts him through, he remains an eminently reasonable man, never going on an ego trip or doing anything else counterproductive.

It is tremendously helpful to have the grounded Willis character as the center of the script, because otherwise it is easy to imagine the film getting away from Siri. His mind is elsewhere -- on shot composition and camerawork, which are admittedly elaborate, moody and impressive. Dig that opening pan-out, which begins as an opening credits sketch, cuts to a close-up of a character, and then sails back, ever so dramatically, to reveal a squadron of police cars and ambulances surrounding a small house where a crazed cuckold is about to kill his wife and child. Or how about that crazy set-up sequence, where the main players pass each other in cars until, finally, the camera leaps over a mountain to ominously show us the towering house that will be the setting of the brutal action that will follow.

All of this sounds fairly silly, and very much like something that shouldn't impress me at this point in the game. It does impress me, for two reasons: 1) it works, creating a mood of larger-than-life anxiety and dread; 2) it shows effort and ambition, a desire not merely to make a genre film, but to make a remarkable one. The second without the first wouldn't be much, granted, but it's heartening anyway; we could use more stylists working in genre filmmaking.

You might expect Hostage to forget about its elaborate opening and settle down into a run-of-the-mill action flick, much like Assault on Precinct 13 did earlier this year. But it never lets up, maintaining its grandiose, almost pompous tone all the way to the end, at one point resorting to hellfire, Barton Fink-style, to make an impression. There's a thin line between stylish and gimmicky, I suppose, but I don't think Hostage crosses it -- the script by Doug Richardson (Die Hard 2) is rock-solid, if not in logic then in pacing, suspense and character. Siri is just keeping things lively.

Siri's theatrics do start to become a touch ridiculous in the final minutes, especially considering the pedestrian resolution that the movie finally gives us. But he redeems himself with a beautiful final shot, and I love the way that the Macguffin remains a Macguffin; there's no need for drawn-out explanations or revealing the identities of the villains. If Hostage ultimately seems a little thin, it's because all the fireworks are in service of a story that's about as linear and straightforward as it gets.

--Eugene Novikov